


the plasma in his veins

by WildChaser



Series: the plasma verse [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angus MacGyver as Alex Summers, Bittersweet, Chernobyl, Coda, Gen, Jack and the mutant jokes, Mac misses his powers, but mostly bitter, episode 2.17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 21:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13935645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildChaser/pseuds/WildChaser
Summary: The radiation couldn’t give you superpowers.The radiation kills you, that’s all.There is no such things as mutants.All these statements were true in this world, and Mac hated them with passion.____________________________Or: the fic I needed to write because Mac in 2.17 was so snappy towards Jack that explaining it with the 'Matty situation' was not good enough for me - so I came up with my own reason





	the plasma in his veins

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! 
> 
> *not beta read, so if you see any mistakes, please point them out to me in the comments

 

Mac knows he is harsh towards Jack, really. And he knows Jack doesn’t mind, because Jack thinks Mac is troubled by Matty and her secrets, so he forgives Mac his grumpiness in advance. Obviously, it is true as well, but that’s not all.

 

It is a technique Jack would often use to distract Mac. He would keep coming up with these weird theories, so weird that they bordered on ridiculous, mostly to occupy Mac; to make him busy somehow, even if only with snarky explanations to why Jack’s theories made completely no sense. Jack was fine with Mac’s characteristic way of mansplaining – or maybe, since Mac took it to a completely new level, Jack should call it _macsplaining._

Anyway, it’s how they operated. When Mac was troubled, Jack went to great lengths to take Mac’s mind off his problems, happily making himself the target of Mac’s slight annoyance. It usually worked, and Jack didn’t really mind, especially because after Mac dealt with the problem, he would always visit Jack with a multi-pack of beer and an apologetic expression.

This time, however, all the mutant talk got to Mac on way different level than Jack could ever comprehend. Well, he might comprehend if Mac ever told him what it was truly about, but despite their overall ‘no secrets between us’ policy, this was the one thing Mac had to exclude from this deal.

 

The radiation couldn’t give you superpowers.

The radiation kills you, that’s all.

There is no such things as mutants.

 

All these statements were true in this world, and Mac hated them with passion. That’s why he snapped at Jack when he started making all those mutant jokes. Yeah, spend some time in Chernobyl and you’ll become a Professor X, sure thing, Jack.

It might have been funny, if not for the fact that Mac would gladly bathe in uranium if he thought that it could give him his powers back. Or, you know, give him them in the first place, since technically, Angus MacGyver never possessed any.

Alex Summers, on the other hand, did, but that was a whole different story. Which hurt even more, because it was an actual story. A comic book one. Mac was never into comic books, or graphic novels, whatever, but he read that one as soon as he had found out about it. It was—freaky. And creepy.

Not that he could share these particular feelings with anybody.

 

The thing was, Angus was born as Alex Summers. He had a younger brother, Scott. And they were both mutants, shooting plasma from their bodies. Alex joined the X-men, he was one of the first to do it. Eric and Charles taught him how to control his powers, and that changed his life. Alex owed him a lot, so when he was needed to help with the Apocalypse, he came. And that had cost him his life—at least in some versions of the story.

But that’s not how it looked from Alex’s point of view. He remembered being blown up, he remembered the pain ploughing through his body, he remembered a brief thought ‘ _I’m going to die’_ appearing in his mind. And then he woke up in the same body, but in a completely different circumstances. They told him he was concussed, or maybe that’s just how they explained to themselves why he was asking so many strange questions. After an hour or so – and that’s the weirdest thing in all of that! – Alex actually remembered how he got that concussion. He was working in a lab, at MIT, when some other student screwed something up, and there was an explosion. A minor one, but a piece of a machinery got loose and it flew towards Mac’s head.

Because, you know, he suddenly realized he was Angus “Mac” MacGyver as well, which explained why the doctors were calling him by this weird sounding name.

It was as if he obtained a new history out of the blue – it slowly appeared in his mind, uncovered piece by piece, until he could recall his grandpa, his childhood, his father leaving and—being the only child. But then again, his memories of being Alex Summers never really faded. They just somehow began—coexisting.

For about a month Alex – or Mac – thought he had an extreme case of multiple personality disorder. Both sets of memories were so vivid, but only one of them checked out in real life. And then he had found the X-Men comic books, which blew his mind, and not in the fun sense. His goddamn life was a _comic book story for teenagers_.

It was definitely not something he would ever decide to share with anybody. They wouldn’t believe him, and he wasn’t even bitter about it. _He_ wouldn’t believe himself, honestly. It was too insane, too ridiculous, and yet—Simply true.

 

Alex had no idea what happened, and even as he became Mac, he still had no real answers, although not for the lack of searching for them. In fact, Mac felt like he was looking for some answers for all his life, even if the targets had been changing.

At first, he wanted to find out what had happened when he ‘died’. Then, he wanted to find a way home, back to the universe when the x-gene mutated, even though the widespread hatred for his kind did not make his life easy. But it was his home, he belonged in there and he wanted it back. With time, however, Alex – who was slowly but surely becoming Mac – was forced to get used to the idea that maybe there was no way back. And that maybe _this_ universe needed to become his home instead. It was a terrifying realization, but over the years Mac worked it out. He started belonging _in here_ now.

Meeting Jack in the military helped more than Mac would be comfortable admitting out loud. Alex was used to being the older brother, but it turned out, being in the position of the younger one worked for him as well. If Mac was to be honest, he would definitely say that it was Jack, single-handedly, who made Mac accept his universe as his home.

Mac didn’t have his x-gene in here, and he didn’t have his younger brother, but he had Jack. And as much as he sometimes missed Scott, Mac knew that the kid would turn out alright. Scott had Professor X to help him, and all of the X-Men team as well. And now Mac had Jack, which made this place somehow alright. At first just bearable, but later even—happy, Mac would dare say.

 

Only sometimes would Mac be painfully reminded that he kept some stuff hidden from his best friend. Like now, in Chernobyl, when Jack muses about mutants and radiation and Mac just grits his teeth and tries to make him to shut up, not too subtly. Because in moments like this one, Mac is hit by the brutal truth; the truth that in this place he would never feel—complete.

And - even if it’s hard to admit even to himself, because what kind of person that makes him? – it’s not the lack of Scott’s presence, or Professor’s, or even Beast’s, that bothers him the most. The knowledge that they survived the Apocalypse helps Mac with that. But there is something else that keeps him awake at night. There is something else that is missing, like a limb, but maybe even more important.

 

What had been once a curse, what had later become an asset, what had made him who he was, or who he had been – his power.

 

And dammit, Mac had learned to live with that, had learned to cope when the urges get unbearable, but then there’s Chernobyl and Jack, who’s talking about mutations and—

Mac would really like to blow something up. He’s suddenly dying to feel the burning plasma underneath his skin, to point his hand in a chosen direction and just _release it._ To have all that power under control, to bend it to his wishes, to make it _yield_ —

 

 

 

Mac snaps from his thoughts and takes out his pocket knife. Maybe he will get to blow something up the old-fashioned way, and that will have to do.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: wild-chaser


End file.
